When manufacturing a disk drive, concentric servo sectors 20-2N are written to a disk 4 which define a plurality of radially-spaced, concentric servo tracks 6 as shown in the prior art disk format of FIG. 1. Concentric data tracks defined relative to the servo tracks 6 are partitioned into a plurality of data sectors, wherein the concentric servo sectors 20-2N are considered “embedded” in the data sectors. Each servo sector (e.g., servo sector 24) comprises a preamble 8 for synchronizing gain control and timing recovery, a sync mark 10 for synchronizing to a data field 12 comprising coarse head positioning information such as a track number, and servo bursts 14 which provide fine head positioning information. The coarse head position information is processed to position a head over a target track during a seek operation, and the servo bursts 14 are processed to maintain the head over a centerline of the target track while writing or reading data during a tracking operation.
In the past, external servo writers have been used to write the concentric servo sectors 20-2N to the disk surface during manufacturing. External servo writers employ extremely accurate head positioning mechanics, such as a laser interferometer, to ensure the concentric servo sectors 20-2N are written at the proper radial location from the outer diameter of the disk to the inner diameter of the disk. However, external servo writers are expensive and require a clean room environment so that a head positioning pin can be inserted into the head disk assembly (HDA) without contaminating the disk. Thus, external servo writers have become an expensive bottleneck in the disk drive manufacturing process.
The prior art has suggested various “self-servo” writing methods wherein the internal electronics of the disk drive are used to write the concentric servo sectors independent of an external servo writer. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,843,662 teaches a disk drive which performs a self-servo writing operation by writing a plurality of spiral servo tracks to the disk which are then processed to write the concentric servo sectors along a circular path. Each spiral servo track is written to the disk as a high frequency signal (with missing bits), wherein the position error signal (PES) for tracking is generated relative to time shifts in the detected location of the spiral servo tracks.